The manpower it takes for a sting also works in the operators' favor, Mr. Baeza said.
But Alistair Andrews Communications, with its offices in Sydney and London, was in fact the front for a sting operation set up by journalists to see if MPs could still be "hired" for cash.
"There's always a concern that people may be targeted for a sting operation like this solely because they are Muslims," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relatinns in Washington.
Unlike Dwayne, the longtime employee of the store in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, that the family eventually buys, who has a gift for knowing when city inspectors are descending for a sting, Howe has a sixth sense that isn't much use: "I can look at someone and tell if they've been to boarding school".
But there are no better acting coaches or sources of props for their undercover work: Detective Nolan eavesdrops on her teenagers to pick up the youthful syntax of the day and rummages through their closets to fashion an appropriate look for a sting.
For a sting to register, however, the skin it punctures must have the porousness of reality, and the skin of this novel is a lacquer of charming faux-naïve effects, recalling an England so long presumed lost that the losing of it, again, comes as no surprise.
